Tag: htc

I really wanted the Nexus 4. Having used the Nexus S for the past 18 months, it seemed the obvious upgrade path. I was tempted by the Galaxy Nexus when it was launched, but the poor camera put me off.

Then the day finally came, November 13th (had it in my calendar), the Nexus 4 launch day. No time for when it would actually go on sale though. Checked the Play store at 8am. “Coming Soon”. Received the email notification on my way to work at 8:45. Loaded up the Play store when I got into work at 9:20. Still says “Coming Soon”. WTF.

It was later I found out that they were actually all sold out. Less than an hour after going on sale. Still have no idea what time that actually was. Google utterly failed in this shambolic joke of a “launch” of their flagship device. Shit communication all round from Google. Losing a customer in the process.

I had to upgrade. My Nexus S was so slow it was almost impossible to do anything on the thing. Chrome would take minutes to start up. I never truly considered any other Android devices. I like pure Android. None of this bastardised Android SenseWiz crap. The device (from a hardware perspective) would have to absolutely blow me away for that to happen. The Samsung Galaxy S3 had the best chance, but failed. They all failed.

Nexus 4 wasn’t going back on sale any time soon. So what did I do, after reading up on numerous reviews, I finally decided to make the jump to Windows Phone 8 with the beautiful HTC 8X. I did initially want the Nokia Lumia 920, but after holding both the 920 and 8X, the Lumia is huge and felt like a brick next to the 8X. I knew about WP8’s flaws. But I can live with them. The only app I miss is Dropbox.

The only Google service I truly couldn’t give up was Gmail. But that’s true for everyone who’s main account is a Gmail one. Google Now is a very nice service. But it’s still something I can instantly give up. Google Music hasn’t evolved at all since it was launched. It was only a one-way upload of my iTunes collection. No syncing at all going on. Because of this I never maintained my Google Music collection. Another service I can instantly give up. Google Maps? Now that Bing Maps is using Nokia’s mapping data, with the ability to truly take a map of any country offline, that beats Google’s mobile offering hands down.

Google has failed to retain me as an Android user. I’ve avoided using (and getting locked in to) many of their services. Making the switch easy. The only Android devices I would buy are the Nexus ones, but Google wouldn’t take my money. I still love my Nexus 7, but since I don’t carry it around with me, I’ll be turning off Google’s ability to stalk me.